Again the girl started and glanced over her shoulder, impressed with the same tantalizing conviction of a human presence; of some powerful influence which baffled analysis. Snatching the candle, she put the gold key in her pocket, and turned to leave the room, but stopped, for this time an unmistakable sound like the shivering of a glass or the snapping of a musical string, fell on her strained ears. She could trace it to no particular spot, and conjectured that perhaps a mouse had taken up his abode somewhere in the room, and, frightened by her presence, had run against some of the numerous glass and china ornaments on the etagere, jostling them until they jingled. Replacing the book which she had taken from the shelves, and fastening the box that contained the MSS., she examined the cabinets, found them securely closed, and then hurried out of the room, locked the door, took the key, and went to her own apartment with nerves more unsettled than she felt disposed to confess. For some time after she laid her head on her pillow, she racked her brain for an explanation of the singular sensation she had experienced, and at last, annoyed by her restlessness and silly superstition, she was just sinking into dreams of Ammon and Serapis, when the fierce barking of Ali caused her to start up in terror. The dog seemed almost wild, running frantically to and fro, howling and whining; but finally the sounds receded, gradually quiet was restored, and Edna fell asleep soon after the scream of the locomotive and the rumble of the cars told her that the four o'clock train had just started to Chattanooga. Modern zoologic science explodes the popular fallacy that chameleons assume, and reflect at will, the color of the substance on which they rest or feed; but, with a profound salaam to savants, it is respectfully submitted that the mental saurian--human thought--certainly takes its changing hues, day by day, from the books through which it crawls devouringly. Is there not ground for plausible doubt that, if the work-bench of Mezzofanti had not stood just beneath the teacher's window, whence the ears of the young carpenter were regaled from morning till night with the rudiments of Latin and Greek, he would never have forsworn planing for parsing, mastered forty dialects, proved a walking scarlet-capped polygot, and attained the distinction of an honorary nomination for the office of interpreter-general at the Tower of Babel?